Why the loss of common sense makes us all crazy

"Am I the only person who sees the insanity of pretending that reducing human beings to a condition that we would not allow pets to suffer from is somehow good?"

So asks Clayton Cramer, in a discussion of a police shooting incident involving a mentally ill young man who was "off his meds" and violent. (I've asked pretty much the same question as Cramer.)

Such cases involving crazy people off their meds and violent are numbingly common -- to the point where they're not even considered that newsworthy. If you are unfortunate enough to have a mentally ill family member, good luck getting help. Society does in fact have more sympathy for sick dogs.

I will never forget being present at the scene of a discharge of a psychiatric patient who should not (IMO) have been discharged. The nurse simply gave this hallucinating patient a piece of paper and a prescription, and in a manner I considered extremely callused, simply said, "Take the prescription to a pharmacy and have it filled, and take your medicine as directed."

Right.

This person was incapable of keeping track of the fact that she had been given a prescription, much less taking it to a pharmacy and getting it filled. So she couldn't even reach the point of going "off meds" because she'd never get on them. But the bureaucratic powers that be just don't like to keep people in psychiatric facilities, so in the most callused manner, they resort to a well-oiled bureaucratic fiction -- that these people are no different from an ordinary citizen suffering from a physical illness, and therefore handing a prescription for anti-pyschotic medicine to a hallucinatory patient is "just the same" as handing a prescription for penicillin to a patient with a strep throat.

It is massive fraud, and I have seen it firsthand.

Try helping one of these people, and you'll be told that they're not allowed to discuss the patient's health because that would constitute a violation of HIPPA rules. Never mind that no one even understands HIPPA. Patient privacy is invoked routinely as a bureaucratic shield.

It's a cruel joke that mentally ill people are free and independent citizens capable of making rational decisions about themselves. But like many fictions, it keeps the system going.

Of course, broadening the term "mental illness" to include things like anxiety, codependency and shyness creates a "but for the grace of the bureaucrats, I too could be labeled mentally ill" situation.

Which means that even people who think the system is messed up are hesitant to support changes which could result in the loss of their own rights. Once again, common sense is lost. Someone who is depressed and grieving over the loss of a spouse is not the same as a paranoid schizophrenic. A guy who is too depressed to get out of bed and go to work is not the same as a guy who sleeps in the subway station and yells obscenities at total strangers. We -- those rare citizens still possessed of a modicum of common sense -- know these things intuitively. Yet, to the touchy-feely bureaucrats who want to rule our lives, all illnesses are equal, because all people are or should be wards of the state. Thus, a depressed person is a shy person is a schizophrenic is a conservative. (I think it has to be recognized that just as people who hate war see "warmongers" as delusional, people who hate guns might tend to see anyone wanting a gun as suffering from mental illness.)

I see the problem as twofold. First, the bureaucracy is the de facto, unelected ruling class. Second this ruling class now (at least to a large degree) lacks common sense.

This makes it impossible to come up with a common sense standard to determine what "mental illness" is, much less a standard by which it can be determined which people are so incapable of taking care of themselves that they need to be cared for.

I'm old enough to remember when "crazy people" were "put away."While psychiatrists had to certify them with a diagnosis, there was a common sense standard involved which is gone.

Unfortunately, there's no getting certain things back.

posted by Eric on 01.04.08 at 10:13 AM





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Comments

I sympathize, but I'm not convinced that we're treating sick people worse than animals. It may be that we're treating them quite a bit better, by respecting their autonomy despite their illness.

roy   ·  January 4, 2008 04:15 PM

Look up the contraindications for meds for schizophrenics. Most of them when used long term destroy organs (depending on the individual).

If you have a schizophrenic in the house get them tobacco and dole it out to them (not too much, not to little). It is safer.

In fact the intake nurse will ask you about your family member's illegal drug use and then tell you not to be concerned. Self medication they say.

We are so screwed - between the police (and the people who make the laws) and the medical cartels getting sick is positively dangerous.

Now my question is. If the medicos know all about this self medication stuff why aren't they communicating it to the public?

Malpractice I'd call it. What ever happened to: first do no harm?


M. Simon   ·  January 4, 2008 10:39 PM

"What ever happened to: first do no harm?"

Power is more important to today's intelligentsia than a disinterested pursuit of truth. They haven't noticed they have destroyed the citizenry's automatic respect for science and scientists. though they habitually rely upon it in using the fallacious argument from authority ("Are you a doctor?"). Of those who have noticed, I don't believe they care.

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